1 Introduction

Keyword data informs and impacts every other SEO task, including finding content topics, on-page SEO, email outreach, and content promotion. While a wealth of companies provide granular keyword data, a birds-eye view of Google Searches is missing in the industry. This large-scale analysis aims to fill the gap.

2 Methodology

As a data partner, DataForSEO provided the raw data for the analysis through their keyword database [https://dataforseo.com/databases]. The analysis was limited to US keyword data that accounted for around 306 keyword searches. Keyword monthly searchers with volume of 0 were removed from the data set. The data was queried from a Google BigQuery database.

To attain additional insights from the data, we enriched a random sample of around 2.5 million keywords with the Ahrefs Keyword Explorer. This includes the data on difficulty, return rate, clicks, region volume, and SERP features.

Below an overview of the data:

Overview
Statistic Value
Total number of searches ~306 million
Total volume of searches ~32 billion
Searches with missing volume 0.51%
Mean search volume 989
Median search volume 10
Mean CPC 0.61


3 Research Findings


3.1 Top searches

These are the most popular searches, with volume based on ahref:

Searches with highest volume
Keyword Volume
youtube 0.546%
facebook 0.530%
amazon 0.407%
gmail 0.296%
google 0.271%
weather 0.164%
yahoo 0.161%
ebay 0.161%
walmart 0.145%
yahoo mail 0.143%
netflix 0.139%
google docs 0.100%
translate 0.098%
usps tracking 0.093%
news 0.091%
craigslist 0.091%
fox news 0.091%
cnn 0.083%
calculator 0.073%
hotmail 0.064%
roblox 0.063%
target 0.063%
instagram 0.057%
msn 0.057%
trump 0.054%
twitter 0.054%
bank of america 0.051%
new year 0.051%
maps 0.050%
nfl 0.044%
ups tracking 0.042%
pinterest 0.041%
linkedin 0.041%
espn 0.038%
disney plus 0.037%
etsy 0.036%
usps 0.035%
finance 0.033%
aol 0.029%
women’s world cup 2019 0.026%
nba 0.024%
you 0.023%
amazon prime video 0.022%
internet speed test 0.021%
bed bath and beyond 0.021%
ikea 0.020%
dow 0.018%
food near me 0.018%
united airlines 0.018%
speedtest 0.017%



3.2 Search volume

The top searches have high volume compared to the remaining ~300 million.

High volume among top searches
Searches Volume
Top 50 4.9%
Top 500 8.4%
Top 2000 12.2%
Top 10k 18.8%



3.3 Spell types

If a misspelling is recognized, a so-called spell type is suggested. There are three types of spell shown in the table below. 1.4% of searches have a spell type, but those that do have tend to have high volume.

3.4 Questions in searches

~14% of searches are in the form of a question. “how” is the most common question word.

Although only about 1% of the total volume of searches are questions



3.5 Stopwords

“how” and “the” are the most common stopwords, which are present in 6-8% of searches.

A colorful version:



3.6. Keyword length

The most searched queries have length 6-9 characters, and falls continuously for search queries longer or shorter than that.


Search phrases with fewer words have higher volume



3.7 Keyword info categories

Internet & Telecom is the keyword category with the highest mean volume.

Arts & Entertainment, Internet & Telecom, and News, Media & Publications have the highest total volume.

Finance has the highest mean cost per click.

The average CPC for all searches is 0.61



3.8 Keyword difficulty

As volume increases, the difficulty increases.

The slope of the linear regression line is such that for each doubling of the volume, the difficulty increases by 1.63. For example, as the volume goes from 100 to 3200 (6 doublings), the difficulty increases by roughly 1.63 * 6 ~= 10.


Higher difficulty also means higher CPC on average. Note that the Y axis is logarithmic, so a small move on the y axis is a large increase in value.

An alternative visualization of the same data by grouped category in a boxplot:



3.9 SERP features

(Note there are (at least) two additional SERP feature types (Knowledge Panel and Videos), for which the sample size is too small to include.)

The SERP features featured in the most searches are Image pack and People also ask:

The knowledge card has a huge effect in reducing the clicks-per-search, while the other SERP features have limited effect. Searches with the Shopping results SERP feature have higher cps on average.

Easy keywords have fewer SERP features.

Thumbnail & Top stories is the most common SERP feature pairing.

Searches without SERP features tend to be low volume.

Searches with more SERP features have higher mean difficulty.



3.10 Return rate

We can see that searches with high return rates tend to have lower difficulty, and to be clicked on a lot more.

Comparison of searches with same volume but different return rates
return_rate mean_cpc mean_clicks mean_difficulty
very high 0.96 71423 18.4
low 0.70 15094 25.6



3.11 International searches

There is search data from 5 English-speaking countries.

Of those, US and UK have the highest search volume per person.

US has significantly higher cost per click on average

The following is based on analysis with ahref.

International searches have overall higher volume

Total search volume
region volume
US 33%
International 67%

Internationally there are more searches with very low volume, while US has more searches with medium volume.

There is not a large difference in the number of searches with very high volume. However, the total volume of these searches is a lot higher internationally

Searches that have high US volume tend to have high international volume, and vice versa. But there are some exceptions.

A version showing data points binned to hex tiles showing counts:

Searches that have much higher volume internationally
keyword us_volume international_volume
filmoviplex 10 295990
cloroquina 200 5869800
parivahan sewa 10 276990
jokaroom 10 173990
handball em 20 327980
Searches that have much higher volume in the US
keyword us_volume international_volume
football playoff schedule 602000 1000
frontier mail 586000 1000
spectrum mobile 526000 1000
chase bank near me 523000 1000
spectrum internet 998000 2000

Searches that have higher volume in US have a higher click-per-search on average than searches that have higher volume internationally.

They also have a higher cost-per-click on average

Searches that have higher volume internationally, tend to have higher difficulty


3.12 Searches with highest spikes in volume

Many of these are people featured in Google doodles

Searches with highest difference in search volume over time
keyword min max
holiday season 1600 37200000
holidays season 2900 37200000
joseph antoine ferdinand plateau 10 20400000
iowa caucus results 110 16600000
barbara hepworth 1900 16600000
roberto gomez bolaños 4400 16600000
the edmonton grads 0 13600000
jacob blake 70 13600000
pacita abad 170 13600000
junko tabei 720 13600000
camille claudel 3600 13600000
ignacio anaya garcía 390 11100000
ynés mexía 720 11100000
the seasons winter 2900 11100000
seasons: winter 4400 11100000
in winter season 6600 11100000
super tuesday results 20 9140000
happy holiday 2019 90 7480000
happy holidays 2019! 140 7480000
super bowl score 3600 7480000